Marlins looking to add while selling at the trade deadline. So who could be dealt?
There was a collective pause before the start of the eighth inning when Miami Marlins manager Don Mattingly took second baseman Starlin Castro out of Monday’s 11-6 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Could another trade be on the horizon? The MLB trade deadline, after all, is at 4 p.m. Wednesday and the Marlins are open to making moves during these final few hours.
Nope. Just a routine double switch.
“No one sent a message to get Star out of the game. I can say that,” Mattingly said after the series-clinching win. “Star has been going every day, and he’s a little bit beaten up, felt we can get him an inning off.”
That doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill has said multiple times during the past couple weeks that the organization is fielding offers and fully expects calls to ramp up as the deadline gets closer. That’s the nature of the business.
And the Marlins will listen as they take what Hill essentially describes as a buying-by-selling approach in the second year of their latest rebuild. In other words, the Marlins are hoping to maximize the value of players who aren’t part of the team’s long-term future by using them to create more depth in their minor-league system.
“We won’t stop looking at opportunities to improve the organization,” Hill said. “We have our guys here, and we’ll continue to work the phones and talk to our peers to see if there’s opportunities for us to get better. As I said, we’re in add mode in terms of adding talent to this organization and adding layers of talent to help us ultimately win championships.”
Who exactly would the Marlins be willing to deal?
In simplest terms, it depends on the offer.
All expiring contracts — which include veterans Castro, Neil Walker and Curtis Granderson — are on the table. They could potentially be packaged with a mid-tier prospect for a bigger return, similar to what the Marlins did when they traded Sergio Romo to the Minnesota Twins on Saturday. Miami packaged pitching prospect Chirs Vallimont and a player to be named along with Romo to the Twins in exchange for first-base prospect Lewin Diaz, who now ranks as the Marlins’ 11th overall prospect according to MLB Pipeline and is the top first baseman in their farm system.
Walker is due just $678,000 the rest of the season. Castro is owed $3.7 million the rest of this season and has a $16 million salary hit in 2020 with a $1 million buyout.
“If there’s an opportunity to extract value for an expiring contract,” Hill said, “we’ll pursue it.”
However, if teams are willing to overpay, the Marlins would consider moving a controllable pitcher. Trevor Richards, Caleb Smith and Nick Anderson are the Marlins’ top trade chips in that regard.
Richards, who was moved to the bullpen ahead of the Marlins’ four-game series against the Diamondbacks, has been scouted by other teams during the past few weeks. Smith, despite missing a month with left hip inflammation, has been the Marlins’ most consistent starter. Miami has won each of his five starts since returning from injury, a stretch in which he has posted a 3.48 ERA with 37 strikeouts in 31 innings. Smith has thrown seven innings with nine strikeouts each of his last two starts. Both have four years of team control.
Anderson, a 29-year-old rookie right-handed reliever, has struck out 69 of the 186 batters he has faced this year (37.1 percent). He has five years of team control.
It would likely take a massive haul — whether it’s a couple high-end prospects or a major-league-ready hitter — to get the Marlins to bite, though.
“There will be a flurry of things,” Hill said. “We are a very deadline-oriented industry, and I think truthfully a lot of clubs were waiting as late as they could to see if they really think they’re in and how they’re going to approach the deadline. Are they going all-in? Are they going to be systematic and maybe go for more control? It’s playing it both ways.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2019 at 10:47 AM.
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